BOOK II

HIS ENTERPRISE

CHAPTER I

SPRINGTIME

Nature, waking at the song of woodland birds to find herself naked, fashioned with flying fingers such a robe of young green and amber, hyacinth and pearl as only she can weave or wear.  A scent of the season rose from multitudinous “buds, and bells, and stars without a name”; while the little world of Devon, vale and forest, upland and heathery waste, rejoiced in the new life, as it rang and rippled with music and colour even to the granite thrones of the Moor.  Down by the margin of Teign, where she murmured through a vale of wakening leaves and reflected asphodels bending above her brink, the valley was born again in a very pageant of golden green that dappled all the grey woods, clothed branch and bough anew, ran flower-footed over the meadow, hid nests of happy birds in every dell and dingle, and spread luxuriant life above the ruin of the year that was gone.  A song of hope filled each fair noon; no wasted energy, no unfulfilled intent as yet saddened the eye; no stunted, ruined nursling of Nature yet spoke unsuccess; no canker-bitten bud marked the cold finger of failure; for in that first rush of life all the earthborn host had set forth, if not equal, at least together.  The primroses twinkled true on downy coral stems and the stars of anemone, celandine, and daisy opened perfect.  Countless consummate, lustrous things were leaping, mingling, and uncurling, aloft and below, in the mazes of the wood, at the margins of the water.  Verdant spears and blades expanded; fair fans opened and tendrils twined; simultaneous showers of heart-shaped, arrow-shaped, flame-shaped foliage, all pure emerald and translucent beryl, made opulent outpouring of that new life which now pulsed through the Mother’s million veins.  Diaphanous mist wreaths and tender showers wooed the Spring; under silver gauze of vernal rain rang wild rapture of thrushes, laughter of woodpeckers, chime and chatter of jackdaws from the rock, secret crooning of the cushat in the pines.  From dawn till dusk the sweet air was winnowed by busy wings; from dawn till dusk the hum and murmur of life ceased not.  Infinite possibility, infinite promise, marked the time; and man shared a great new hope with the beasts and birds, and wild violet of the wood.  Blood and sap raced gloriously together, while a chorus of conscious and unconscious creation sang the anthem of the Spring in solemn strophe and antistrophe.

As life’s litany rises once again, and before the thunder of that music rolling from the valleys to the hills, human reason yearly hesitates for a moment, while hope cries out anew above the frosty lessons of experience.  For a brief hour the thinker, perhaps wisely, turns from memory, as from a cloud that blots the present with its shadow, and spends a little moment in this world of opal lights and azure